


Aim High, Shoot Low

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Fury road, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Girls with Guns, Mad Max Secret Santa, happy healthy Citadel, morning people are terrifying, slice of Citadel life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:58:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5487950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've got to get up early to survive the Wasteland. A Vuvalini rousts out the Citadel’s women for a dawn lesson in sharpshooting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aim High, Shoot Low

**Author's Note:**

> A Mad Max Secret Santa gift for fools-game on tumblr. Request was for "the ladies of Fury Road: Wives, Vuvalini dead and living, Milk Mothers, Furiosas. Especially Furiosa...Love stuff about the Citadel being a happy place after the movie, any worldbuilding things..." I hope this is what you wanted in your Wasteland stocking!
> 
> And a Vuvalini six-gun salute to [schwarmerei1](http://archiveofourown.org/users/schwarmerei1/pseuds/schwarmerei1) for beta reading.

Awakening, Smith caught her breath. It was dark as the heart of a sandstorm. Where was the tent, the endless whip of the Wasteland wind? The Vuvalini’s dawn watch was her responsibility. Smith reached for her rifle: her hands only found soft, worn fabric. Finally, she remembered. And stretched out in the sand-free bed with a delighted grin.

Smith was at the Citadel. After three thousand days in the dunes, the Citadel was a bit of all right. Smith was old enough to remember the years right after the Fall, when they still lived in buildings. Before wildfire and windstorms and raids trashed any belongings that you didn’t carry. It was good to be in a room, free from your gear during the day, with real privacy at night. She flung an arm around her warm-skinned wife, drowsing beside her.

The other Vuvalini sat bolt upright. “What? What is it?”

Smith cupped a reassuring hand around her shoulder. “Peace. I’m getting up for the sharpshooting session. That’s all.”

Her wife nestled back down. “There’s no more dawn watch. You don’t have to wake up like this any more.”

Smith swung herself out of bed. “It’s still the best time of the day!”

“Mnh. Don’t let me see you in the Infirmary later with bullet holes,” her wife said, shifting into the warm spot Smith had left behind.

Smith drew the window-slit’s narrow curtain. While she dressed, dawn brought enough light for a silvery gleam from her two favourite girls: her wife’s pewter braid and her rifle’s steel barrel. Then, Smith slung the rifle over her shoulder and tiptoed out, up nearby stairs to the Green Tower’s food hall.

After her Wasteland years, Smith remained amazed at the Citadel’s vast scope. Humans were the expendable cogs in its vast machineries. Living in slave-hewn rooms and salvaged luxury, Smith had asked what to do in that machine herself. How to deserve it all. They didn't need her hunting, or her crude metal repairs, or her bullet casting.

The new Council had talked about defense and scouting, looked at the Sisters for their approval. They had agreed. Capable had added, _Help_ _us_ _not be things._ Smith had unpicked that for a while. Sitting on the sand dunes with the escaped women and their Rig, _we are not things_ had sounded strange. In the Citadel, Smith saw how hard it was. She decided to start easy, offering any interested women a go at sharpshooting. It was what she had left.

The food hall was dishing up a thin, salty bean soup. Soup! With vegetables! No more scurvy worries, plenty of hydration. Carrying her bowl carefully, she joined two other early diners. “Morning, Sisters! Ready to kill some targets?”

Cheedo was face down on the table. “I know I have to have the shooting lesson if I’m with the trade group to Gastown." she sighed, muffled by her hair. "But why are we doing this at night?”

Toast stirred her soup and said, pointedly, “Getting up this early is for old people.”

“Got to get up early in the Wasteland to survive! It’ll be morning by the time we’re down there. The sooner we’re out, the longer we get to shoot before it gets crazy hot.”

Toast admitted, “I can’t wait to get a gun in my hands again. Trade you the rest of my soup for some extra bullets?”

Smith snorted. “Gastown’s going to love you.”

Soon, the three of them were off to the Milking Mothers' chambers. It was still necessary to have guards at their entrance – no longer to keep the Milking Mothers in, but to keep out their too-persistent admirers. A bleary guard allowed the Sisters in, but stepped in front of Smith, androgynous in her triple layers and leather hood. “Who's this guy? You that Max?” Cheedo giggled.

Smith said, patiently, “I'm a woman.”

There were worse things than being mistaken for Max. He had done the unthinkable, after she and Annie had bad luck in their road war. He’d returned to the desert road to find them, and hauled them back to the other Vuvalini. Smith was grateful for what he’d done. She owed him a blood debt. With the haunted violence Max carried, it was only a matter of time before it came due. She’d steer clear of him until then. Much as she'd enjoyed having her hand down Max’s trousers while they defended the War Rig, that man was fate and trouble.

Not that she hadn’t enjoyed her share of Wasteland wanderers, in less desperate days. None of them had strong enough seed to make her and her wife into a family. That had come right at the Citadel, too. There were enough kids here for ten tribes. Half of them seemed to be in the Milking Mothers' main room. They swarmed around Smith when she was finally let in.

Though everyone inside was mostly awake, and ten Citadel pups oohed over Smith’s rifle, only two of the Milking Mothers decided they were up for a shooting lesson. “Aw, c’mon. One more?” Smith urged. These women needed to get out, and feel safe about it. _Help them not be things_. A slimmish woman, jawline marked with a row of pitted scars, was watching avidly. Smith held the rifle out to her. “Take a look and decide. She's not loaded, yet. Her name's Sibyl.”

“Come on, Des, when’s the last time you were on the ground?” joshed an enthused Milking Mother.

As Des smiled, her scars arced. “Not so long ago. But I’ll come.”

The six of them progressed across the waking Citadel. One Milking Mother spoke enough to fill all the silences, putting Smith at ease. It took them three quarters of an hour to reach the War Tower and the Treadmill down. “It’s so strange, how long it takes to get anywhere in here,” Smith said.

The chatty Milking Mother smiled. “The War Boys rappelled up and down a lot. I'm still getting used to going down at all, after so long. Me, walking around, shooting a gun. I’ll be a Warlord myself next.”

“That’s the idea!” said Smith.

“The more of us that can defend ourselves, the better,” said Toast. “Speaking of…some other women said they wanted to join us. I said you’d say if it was all right.”

“Well, yeah! Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Smith, even as she saw the Milking Mothers shrink next to each other, looking behind her. Smith turned. There were three wiry, white-painted figures, almost like War Boys except for their chests, bound hard with salvaged fabric strips. Two were bald: one rebel had started to grow a quiff of hair.

Toast said, flatly, “War Girls. A few of them slipped in amongst the Boys, over the years. They fought for the Immortan, too.”

“Hey,” one of the War Girls. “The Imperator said you’d show us how to shoot real shine.”

Smith frowned. “Were you on the Fury Road?” She knew this was part of the price of the Citadel’s luxury, letting bygones be bygones. With three of her tribeswomen dead, that only went so far.

They shook their heads. “Be in Valhalla, if I had, like our Boys.” “I was getting blood.” “The Imperator. You know?”

Smith thought she did. This War Girl had felt her own debt, to Furiosa, who’d made her place in the Citadel possible, tolerable. Smith hardened her mouth. “You going to do what I say? This is dangerous, from the minute you stand near a loaded rifle.” When they agreed, and she caught Toast’s satisfied nod, Smith grinned again. “Then let’s get out there.”

They went into the spacious Treadmill area to wait for first drop of the day. The Treadmill Rats, former Wretched like Des, filed into the complex works, ready to power the lift with their legs and feet. They made the V8 sign for the Sisters and Milking Mothers. One of them yelled, "Des! They throwin' you back out?”

Des pointed at Smith. She roughened her voice to yell back, "She's gonna put a gun in my hands. Teach me how to shoot. I'll be back up, with her." The Treadmill Rats fell strangely silent.

As the Treadmill began its clanking descent, Smith asked Des, "What was all that about?"

Des said, “It was the one of the rules the Immortan had for the Wretched. We could stay at the base, take the water as it came, barter him our children, ourselves. But we had to trade in any guns. Or else…” Des shivered at the memory.

Smith gave her shoulder a pat. It was time to change the subject. She turned to the latest arrivals. “I never met a War Girl before. Is it War Girls? Or War Women? Something else?"

They shrugged their white clay shoulders. One said, "We used to be in with the Boys. Can’t piss on the wall, but I don’t feel much like a girl.”

“If we're learning to shoot, are we all going to be Vuvalini?” Cheedo asked. Everyone looked at Smith.

Smith rubbed her chin. “I don't know. Us Vuvalini, we were trying to be a tribe. A new people out of the end of the world. It didn't work out that way. You’re doing a lot better here.”

The War Girls stood up straighter. Again, one said, “I like being here. Being Citadel. I want to be a fighter, to win like you did, but here.”

“We'll make a new thing. Something for everybody,” said the chatty Milking Mother.

The last Milking Mother, carrying Smith's rifle, stayed quiet. But when the platform hit the ground, she was the first away, walking soft and fast into the dust. “Go left – the firing range is out behind the Seige Tower,” Smith called, lengthening her stride. Cheedo danced up to keep the two of them company.

The further they went from the lift, the easier it was for Smith to take the lead. This was her element, the Wasteland dust and a handful of strong women. The crude firing range was up ahead, a series of metal poles rammed into the salt earth, waiting to have targets balanced or hung. By the time drew the group drew close, most of them were laughing, War Girls bracing their arms into muscle for the others to admire, Des and Toast copying them. Then somebody groaned, “Aw, some smeg’s here already.”

The rifle-toting Milking Mother shielded her eyes and peered into the angled dawn light. A lean, clean-headed figure was raising a pistol. “Which War Boy is that?”

“A dumb one. They can’t hit that from there with a pistol,” snarked a War Girl. "Show off."

A shot cracked the morning, followed by the _spang_ of bullet-struck metal. The sun cleared the eastern mountains to warm the figure’s flesh and shine off her steel. Behind Smith, the group got quiet and serious.

“Furiosa,” Toast said. “How’d she get down here without the lift?”

The snarky War Girl bit her knuckles. “Knows the Immortan’s secrets.”

Smith sighed. She remembered an earlier Furiosa: one of the Vuvalini’s apocalypse kids, funny and fierce. But raiders had torn her from their tribal dream. To survive her Citadel nightmare, Furiosa had hardened herself into a road warrior, deadly and self-contained. More, she had lived and learned the machinery of the Citadel, rising within it, then rebelling against it. She was equal to the stronghold’s vastness. The Sisters were too, but they were elevated, erudite, too young to doubt themselves the way Smith did.

Smith hollered, “Hey! We were going to get some practice in. Wanna shoot with us?” Her voice cracked. (Valkyrie had been the one with the beautiful, carrying voice.) Furiosa turned, but said nothing. The group behind her shuffled, waiting, intertwined. Still shouting, Smith called, “We’ll get started over here.” If that was Furiosa’s target distance, it was better to keep the shooting novices well away.

“Safety and loading first!” Smith said. “Gather ‘round and listen up. A circle, so everyone can see.” Smith took them through gun safety, as if they were the Vuvalini kids so long ago. All of them dead, today, except for the road warrior. Smith heard the shotless silence, felt her gaze.

Like the Vuvalini, Furiosa sheltered something rare: slivers of kindness, whispers of memory, red threads of empathy. Smith knew these frailties needed as much violence as a human could muster, to keep them alive in the Wasteland. She’d learned this the hard way. Fighting for the Vuvalini, Smith hadn’t had to carry that violence alone.

In the Citadel, Furiosa had.

 _Help them not be things_. Smith knew how to do that for the circle around her. The Wretched, the Milking Mothers, speaking out, becoming people again. The War Girls, feeling what it was like to be seen, to be themselves. The Sisters, flourishing as leaders. Herself, warmed by the others, able to fight and remember what the fight was for. Furiosa? Furiosa felt beyond her.

Finally, once they’d laughed through her talk and everyone had held the rifle as if she was loaded, Smith began to really load the gun. “Who’s up first?”

“Me! That rifle’s chrome,” a War Girl declared.

Smith felt Toast start and subside. “She can go,” Toast said, politic and rueful.

A light, even voice startled them. “You're a good shot, Toast. Try this.” Furiosa was a meter and a half behind Toast, holding out a blued-steel pistol.

Toast lit up with a rare smile. “You’re sure?”

Furiosa nodded, then met Smith's eyes. "Loaded, safety's on."

Smith took it from there. "What she said. Toast, show us the right way to hold it."

As Toast took the pistol, Smith felt what to do, then. It was so small, so easy. She stepped out a touch, changed her angle. Just like that, Furiosa was in their circle, too.


End file.
